Words matter. Words have consequences. That’s one of the lessons drummed into the aspiring young journalists I now teach.

Yes, the man who gunned down five employees at the Capital Gazette had a long-term beef and a failed lawsuit against the paper. But those of us who make a living with words can’t help but wonder: Did violent rhetoric inadvertently greenlight violent actions?

I say inadvertently because, having spent most of my career covering politicians, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

For most of them, reporters have become a convenient foil for an anti-establishment schtick that reflects more political calculus than a sincerely held belief. Why else would President Donald Trump turn to the very media outlets he so gleefully characterizes as “failing” when he has a big story to tell? When commentator Milo Yiannopoulos wrote in a text message, two days before the Capital Gazette massacre, that he couldn’t wait for vigilante squads to start “gunning down journalists,” he didn’t mean it literally, he says. It was just a "private joke."

OK. Maybe. But the problem comes when some disturbed individuals take these sorts of statements, not as political hyperbole but as a call to action. Ask the families who were enjoying a Sunday afternoon outing at Washington, D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria when a gunman, inspired by internet conspiracy theories, started shooting up the place. Ask the Republican members of Congress whose baseball practice became a target range for another alienated man with a political beef and a gun.

Distrust in media

At a time when the advertising model that supported public interest journalism has collapsed, the media has in many ways exacerbated this trend. All too many news outlets have turned to what I would call the studio wrestling model of journalism: instead of featuring well reported stories that take time and money to produce, we have partisan shoutfests where the most outrageous comment is rewarded with more airtime, more retweets, more attention.

Recent studies show that Americans are increasingly mistrustful of key democratic institutions: the media and the government. A bipartisan poll commissioned by former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Joe Biden and Freedom House reveals an underlying anxiety about the fragility of our democracy. These are not unreasonable fears.

We live in a time of great global uncertainty. The world order established after World War II is giving way to something as-yet unformed. At times when the news can be disturbing, there’s a strong temptation to kill the messenger. Literally. Next week, a court in Egypt — an important U.S. ally — is scheduled to deliver a verdict in the case of the photojournalist Shawkan, who has been jailed for five years for covering anti-government protests. He is facing the death penalty.

Changing the course

The terrible irony of this targeting of the press is that it attacks one of the very institutions that stands as an antidote to alienation and insecurity. And the attacks are coming at a time when the digital upheaval has already weakened many media institutions.

At the Capital Gazette, “we keep doing more with less,” editor Jimmy DeButts said, in a series of heartfelt tweets immediately after the murders. “We find ways to cover high school sports, breaking news, tax hikes, school budgets & local entertainment. We are there in times of tragedy. We do our best to share the stories of people, those who make our community better. Please understand, we do all this to serve our community.”

Educating ourselves as to how to support that kind of work, as opposed to the hatemongering that dominates all too much of our discourse today, is going to be a long term project. But that shouldn’t daunt a country that planned D-Day and sent a man to the moon.

When I was a kid, nobody wore seat belts, everybody smoked and a three-martini lunch with a heaping side of cholesterol was considered the acme of fine dining. If we changed all that, surely we can change the course we are now on.

Like the lady in the poster says, “We can do it.” We must do it. Our democracy depends on it.

Kathy Kiely is the incoming Lee Hills chair in Free Press Studies at the University of Missouri and the Press Freedom Fellow at National Press Club’s nonprofit Journalism Institute. Follow her on Twitter: @kathykiely